[fergus51]

Alright, I was not born and raised in the US (though I do have citizenship) so I don't pretend to understand the American people's feelings about Vietnam.

But, what I don't get is all the anger aimed at a 2 bit celebrity who protested a war that a lot of other americans protested too. I think she gets too much attention. The real bad guys in my opinion are the men who continued to send America's sons and daughters to fight a pointless war that couldn't be won. I always felt more strongly against the gov't that continued to escalate the conflict than I did hippy protesters (even though I disagree with SO much of what they did too).

And I think any citizen can be a good advocate for nurses regardless of their ties to the profession. Health care concerns everyone.

[Chellyse66]

Thanks for the link to the speech. Here is the closing quote by Jane Fonda,
"In closing I want to touch upon your profession itself. Nurses and midwives are the centrepiece, the very foundation, of a country's health care. Without you, health care would collapse and, just as these is no longer recognises national borders, so health care has become global. So this is a global issue, this issue of the importance of nurses. But you are a predominantly female profession, which means that like all mainly female professions, including the work of housewives, you are marginalised, trivialised, over-worked, underpaid and made to feel guilty if you complain about it or organise around it. It's the "women-are-selfish-if-they-think-about-their-own-well-being" syndrome and its as old as the garden of Eden and nurses seem to get accused of its more than any other women's profession: "How dead they go on strike when there sick people…" You know the litany better than I do. It has got to stop! In and it can. You have enormous numbers, 2.6 million just in the United States, and more than 12 million worldwide. If you borrow a page from the women's movement, better yet, collaborate with your country's women's movement, and translate your numbers into political clout, you can demand the economic and political respect to deserve. You can make governments in their responsibility to nurses as a basic national investment.

Go for it!
For your sake and for the girls."

[Tim-GNP]

I know that veterns of the Vietnam era have little use for Jane Fonda and many refer to her as a traitor.

As for me... I will always think of her as "Barbarella."

I believe we should forgive as God expects us to, BUT, if you were divorced from a spouse that had beaten and abused you for years, perhaps you could forgive that BUT would you want to associate with him or have him included in a part of your life that you considered important? What Jane Fonda did during the war is between her and God, BUT I don't feel she can represent the nursing profession with dignity as she has caused hurt and harm that cannot be undone for many. Many of the stories going around the internet are just stories that someone made up about her, but some things, like her picture in a plane with enemy soldiers cannot be misunderstood. I want to be certain of the character of people on my team.....hers leaves much to be desired. Yes, we all do things when we are young and many live with the effects for the rest of their lives....this is her burden, caused by the choices she made. She wasn't forced to do what she did, it was her choice and to every action there is a consequence, this is hers. I guess this is why our parents have always said to be careful of what you do for you may have to live with it for a long time. I absolutely do not know how she can look at the faces of the men that fought in Vietnam and not feel shame for betraying them. They didn't want to be there either but did it because they were told it was their duty. Many vets came home to be spit on, made to feel worthless, and she did her part to make sure they didn't get any breaks. I wonder what the statistics are on the guys whose lives were ruined because of this war??? Many today still do no function normally and they will forever be haunted. I'm sorry but I just cannot see what she can do for nurses....she just doesn't seem trust worthy to me!

[cmggriff]

Having been to war and having lived through the Vietnam era, I can say I think I understand the actions of both ane Fonda and 1Lt Wiliam Calley. I might well have done the same things they did had I found myself in their circumstances. fergus, I think the rancor you notice in conversations about Vietnam is a result of American guilt feelings. We fell guilty about killing innocent people. We feel guilty about the way we treated our own soldiers. But most of all, I think we feel guilty about losing.
So welcome to the US fergus. But you should know that as a group we are not nice people. After all, our ancestors stole this land from the people living here. They killed the women and children of those people and justified it all as inevitable. Gary

[Dplear]

cmggriff....am I still to be punished and condemed for the supposed sins of great great great granparents? Our history is past us let us remember it but only in passing, instead look to the future for that is where we are going. No amount of hindsight or revision can change what was done whether it was right or wrong.

[rncountry]

Do you think that Americans are unique is this regard,cmggriff? A short list of others who have behaved no different. Romans, Greeks, Britians, French, Mongols, Hebrews, Russians, Germans, Japanese, Chinese and I could go on and on. The things in common here is the want for land, and the idea that they were better than the indiginous peoples. Every country and every generation has it's own sins and tribulations to have to deal with. Question is can anyone learn a thing from it?

[majic65]

What many of you do NOT seem to know is that Jane Fonda has been extremely active the past few years in programs to prevent Teen pregnancy. Not only has she given her time--and LOTS of it, but LOTS of $$ as well. I feel that she is certainly an appropriate person to coment on nurisng and health care. She has done some great things especially in Georgia.
Yess, she did some incrfedibly stupid and hurtful things as a young woman (but how many of us have not?) And as the then-wife of an officer who served 2 tours in Viet Nam,I felt her actions were ill-advised and incredibly stupid acts, which accomplished very little. She has appologized--and I believe she was sincere.
Lets face it, we can use all the press and support we can get right now. So you don't like her or agree with her--that is your right. But you NOTICED what she said, and it was postive about nursing.
BTW--if what is puvblished in USA Todayis an example of Gannett's "interest" in nursing, then we can sure count them out!

[rncountry]

No offense Gary, just wanted to point out that Americans haven't got a corner on being stupid at times. I think Americans do want to be thought of well for the most part, but we also do a fine job of beating the hell out of ourselves sometimes too. There seems to be a tendency in this country to swing wildly from one extreme to another. And whatever the last "bad" thing was we dwell on it to the point of obession. To me the Vietnam War is no exception. Learning lessons from stupidity is one thing, however it is something different when you can't move forward and are paralyzed for fear of making another error in judgement. Soldiers in Vietnam went from being demonized to being pitied. Truth is most were never demons and most don't need pity either. The vast majority of Vietnam vets are well adjusted individuals that moved on with their lives. Many of the individuals that made it on TV, papers etc... with horrific stories of being a green beret on secret missions, WERE NEVER IN VIETNAM OR IF THEY WERE DID NOT SEE COMBAT! There are others that have claimed PTSD, or agent orange contaimination that WERE NOT COMBATANTS EITHER. All the government has to do is look at their service record and they would know that. But they don't. Back in the late seventies or early eighties Dan Rather did a special on a vet that lived in the woods in the pacific northwest because he could not intergrate back into society. Guess what? The man was a fraud. He had never been to Vietnam. However did you ever see Dan Rather come on TV and recogize he had made an error? The show I am referring to had like 6 different vets highlighted. I don't recall the numbers without looking it up but the majority HAD NEVER SEEN COMBAT! The image that most Americans have of Vietnam vets is not a correct image. The average of the men in Vietnam was not 18, it was actually older than the average age of the men in WWII. What has happened is there is a perception of what and who an average Vietnam vet is, there is a tendency to pity that image, and we use people like Jane Fonda as our whipping boy to make ourselves feel better for having put that poor, poor vet through the awful things they experienced. I think more than anything Americans as a whole are ashamed and guilt ridden because we did not win. Someone or something must be blamed for that. Till hell freezes over Jane Fonda will be the scapegoat of all that went wrong during that time. And you know where that word comes from? A Hebrew tradition in which the sins of the tribe were transferred to a goat and the goat was then sent into the wilderness to wander and die. Perhaps the anger against Jane Fonda is that she refuses to be the scapegoat and just wither away and die for the sins of the nation? God should forbid that she take up any cause that has to do with nursing, after all who is she to do so? She is the scapegoat, and has no business not doing what she is supposed to be doing.
Yes Gary, we are supposed to be the good country, the country that never does wrong, only right. We are fed a diet of history from elementary school on through that makes us out to be the greatest country in the world. We are the most free, the best place in the world to live. We beat up on the Japenese for refusing to acknowledge their errors in WWII, but the sanitized history we shove down the throats of our children often has skims the truth on our own history. When there is bump in the road like Vietnam then someone or something must pay for it. And Jane Fonda is it.
Sure we are the best country in the world, that is why we have 44 million uninsured people in this country, mostly women and children. That is why with spending over $4000 per person a year on healthcare we still have an infant mortality rate of nearly 8%. Compared with Britian who spends just over a $1000 a year per person, and whose infant mortality rate is just over 5%. We throw our old people away into nursing homes that are underfunded, where we allow the "Greatest Generation" to lie in their own urine and feces. Of the developed countries of the world, we have one the highest teen pregnancey rates in the world. One can blame the sexuality we see on tv, but then one has to look at the much more blanant sex on European TV that would make most Americans turn away blushing and that doesn't make much sense either. As nurses we struggle to be heard on issues like this, appropriate patient care, education etc... but we are damned if we are going to let someone like Jane Fonda take up the cause. It's ok to have the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers come to our rescue, because after all they understand the issues ever so much better, but not someone of poor character like Jane Fonda. Send her out to wander the desert, she deserves nothing better. She is our scapegoat and is not allowed back into the tribe, our sins will then be absolved. And the ghost of Vietnam will go away.

[purplemania]

Phoney Fonda has always been an opportunist seeking publicity. Tell her to keep her face out of my business, nursing.